Archives:

Get Posts by Email

Tag: pricelists

While you’re here at SmugMug, we want you to succeed. It’s in our blood, as we’re photographers ourselves and everything at SmugMug was borne out of our very own needs to capture the world.

Our Support Heroes often get questions from pros wondering why customers aren’t buying their prints and downloads. So here are some top fixes we’ve found to help cure those lackluster sales.

1) Buying Isn’t Enabled

This is pretty key, but is buying enabled in your galleries? By default it’s on, but just in case you should always look to see if the button in your galleries says “Buy” or “Owner Buy.” If it says the latter (or if you log out and don’t see a Buy button at all), buying is disabled for guests. Owner Buy is useful for those of you who don’t want to sell, but still may want a buy a print for your own living room.

How to fix it:Open your gallery settings and look under the “Shopping” tab. The shopping cart toggle is right at the top of the list, so be sure that’s set to ON.

2) Your Pricing Isn’t Set Up

Maybe people are buying your photos at-cost, with no profit to you? This is the nightmare of some photographers, so be absolutely sure that you’re not sitting there accidentally giving away those photos. Fortunately at SmugMug, Portfolio and Business users can literally set it and forget it with Pricelists, so you can set your markup, sit back, and just let the money roll in.

How to fix it: Visit your Pricelists manager, found in your Account Settings > Business tab. Add in products to your default Pricelist, fill in a few numbers, then save it. All galleries on your site with buying enabled will now reflect those prices to your fans. Business account members can create multiple Pricelists and can apply them to different galleries. Find out more info on our help pages.

3) Nobody Knows You Exist

If you build it, will they come? On the internet, the answer is “No.” Even coding up the most beautiful site won’t make magic if no one on the web is talking about you. So take that first step and share the link, post photos to social media, and create buzz so that Google (and potential new clients) hears about you.

4) Your Clients Got Totally Lost

The architecture of your site is more important than you may think it is. We’ve covered this in the past, but we can’t stress enough that you should make the content you want surfaced as visible as possible. When in doubt, give your clients a direct link to the gallery containing their photos, so they don’t wander off and get lost.

5) They Couldn’t Reach You

What happens when they have a question that only you can answer? How much do you charge? Are you available for a September session? Can they hire you? You’d want to be sure that your email address is available front and center. But we’re surprised at the number of websites we see where this info is hidden, buried, or just plain not included. It’s no wonder sales are slow!

6) They’re Just Downloading the Photo

Why pay for a photo when you can get it for free? If this thought makes you cringe, then we rest our case. Because SmugMug users come from all walks of life, lots of family use the free download feature to share photos with friends and family. But as a pro, you’d probably prefer cash, so you should double-check that the pictures you’re selling aren’t open for the picking.

How to fix it: Check your image-protection settings to be sure that Originals aren’t enabled in your galleries, which allows any viewer to save a full-res copy to their computers. You can also flip on Right-Click Protection to foil them further.

7) They’re Scared of You

Even if you’re not particularly warm and fuzzy by nature, it pays to be friendly in your most public space. Practice good marketing mojo, and this will be reflected back in the quality of client that hires you. Imbue the text around your site with your own voice and personality, and be sure to guide them each step of the way towards browsing more, reaching out to you, and buying a print.

How to fix it: Our top three picks for warming up your site are (1) your Right-Click Protection message, (2) your gallery description field, and (3) your About page. We’ve always recommended making your Right-Click Protection message helpful, not threatening. The gallery description shows up over your photos and is the first thing they see when they open it, so be sure to greet guests and give them step-by-step instructions on how to buy photos. Combined with your own heroic story on a custom About page, you’ll get fans checking out in no time.

Good luck and happy selling! If you’ve found your own way to troubleshoot slow sales and aren’t afraid to share your tips with fellow pros, we’d love to hear it

Great news for people who love holding beautiful photos in their hands: We’re adding more print products to our catalogs, starting with Bay Photo.

On April 26, 2013, we’ll be adding loads of new stuff to your Bay Photo catalog and make some price changes that we hope you’ll love. We’re giving you seven days’ notice so that you have plenty of time to study the list and make any adjustments you’d like to your pro pricing.

So read on for all the details and be ready to sell more goodies!

So, What’s New?

ThinWraps and MetalPrints have long been some of your favorite ways to display your photos, but for the longest time SmugMug offered only one finish for each. So we’re thrilled to announce three new variations:

ThinWraps now available in Lustre Satin and Canvas Satin finishes, in addition to our existing Metallic Satin finish.

MetalPrints now available in Satin finish, in addition to the Glossy finish we already offer.

We’ve added a ton of new print sizes, 40 in all. The complete list is included at the end of this post.

And there are some important changes in the Bay Photo base print costs:

Pricing on 114 items are now a bit higher, BUT……

We’ve dropped the pricing on 386 different items.

For math lovers, that’s a mean price change of a $4.89 decrease. The median price change is a $2.47 decrease.

We hope to add lots more new Bay products to your SmugMug catalog soon, so let us know what items you’d love to see.

What do I need to do on April 26th?

Your Bay Photo Pricelists will automatically adjust to reflect the above changes, but remember that the new items won’t be visible to your clients until you add them to your Pricelists.

If you’re a pro who sets your Pricelists by the price displayed, we highly recommend that you give your pricing a once-over to be sure that you’re happy with the amount of profit you’ll earn.

If your pricing is set by Profit, you won’t see any impact to your take-home pay but the displayed price on your site may change especially if you don’t use rounding. You may want to update any printed materials that show your prices.

As always, if you use our Coupons feature, double check those to be sure that you won’t get any surprises to your profits on your next sale.

How do I check my prices?

Click on each Pricelist and be sure that all of the numbers under the “Profit” column are to your taste, and add in any of the new print sizes that you’d like to offer.

Don’t forget to save your changes!

Will there be updates to EZ Prints, WHCC or Loxley Colour’s catalogs?

In due time, yes! As we stated above, we’re starting with Bay Photo first, but you’ll see new products from our other labs as we get the details worked out.

The ability to more easily add new print products to our catalogs was one of the biggest reasons why we urged pros like you to migrate your pricing over to Pricelists. We hope that you’ll agree that it was worth the change.

The List

Here’s the complete list of all the new print sizes you’ll be able to offer, sized in inches:

This post is a result of the passionate feedback many of you gave us after our pricing change—and some incredibly moving stories we heard about your photography.

It’s been two months since we created two Pro accounts, Portfolio and Business, where once there was one. The main difference between them was the ability to price & sell.

Today we’re adding the ability to price & sell to Portfolio accounts. This account level is designed for up-and-coming photographers on a budget who don’t need the features higher-volume Pros use, but who want a gorgeous site, protected images, and the ability to earn profit through our Pro print labs.

As we mentioned two months ago, storage is one of the big drivers behind our decision to split Pro accounts. When we dug into the data, it became clear that heavy storage usage was highly correlated with accounts using advanced Business features, including multiple Pricelists. We also heard great feedback that you needed better visibility about how much storage you’re using, and what you can do about it. We’ve taken that feedback to heart and will provide better tools in the future.

Two months ago we announced that renewals at the new rates would begin October 15th. Many Pros have noticed, however, that we’re still renewing at the old rates. That’s because we didn’t want anyone to renew at the Business rate if they would have been a better fit with Portfolio after this change. With this change, renewals at the new rates will begin early Saturday morning.

Our price change was honestly scary and emotional. Two months later, we’re relieved that it’s providing us the ability to invest more in engineering because sales are up. We are gratified by the support we’ve received from so many of you and hope that this change will offer wonderful up-and-coming photographers a chance to pursue their passion.

A while back we made the announcement that we were giving SmugMug Pros access to bigger and better things: New labs, new products, new features. And to access the new stuff, you had to migrate your gallery- and photo-level pricing over to the new system of Pricelists.

We initially posted a deadline in March but we confess it’s taken us, uhhh, a smidge longer than we expected to move everyone over. We’re almost done now.

So, here’s a quick view on Pricelists, how they work, and why they’re good for you.

Pricelists: Your Hub for Pro Pricing

Pricelists are the ONLY place you’ll ever need to go to set and apply your Pro pricing. Create them, choose your favorite pro print lab and then add in the products you want to sell. After you set your prices, apply the Pricelist to your galleries (or files) and you’re all done.

Want to switch labs on an existing Pricelist? Since each lab offers a unique variety of products, you’ll have to create a new Pricelist each time.

And, remember! Digital downloads have a new base price of $0.49 $0.01 per file and $.99 per gallery when you sell via Pricelists, plus digital download orders with subtotals under $10 incur a $0.50 processing fee. You can create a coupon or zip up a gallery download if you want to continue offering them for free.

Certain features like access to new labs WHCC and Loxley Colour, multiple currencies, Photo Extras and other brand-spanking new features are ONLY available once you’ve migrated to Pricelists. So for maximum money-making mojo, be sure you’re locked, loaded and ready to roll.

See For Yourself

If you’re still using our old system and prefer to be in control of your destiny, see how to painlessly migrate to Pricelists here. Otherwise, sit tight and we’ll do it for you.

And you can review all the details on how Pricelists work on our help pages. As always, our Support Heroes are ready and waiting to hear from you if you’re stuck, confused or just need a little encouragement.

How to Set Your Final Price

You’ll see that you can easily enter a value for your profit and sleep well knowing that’s the amount you’ll make.

But now the price field is changeable, too. Type in a number and you can print up ads, flyers and whatever else you wish, knowing that’s the price your customers will see.

See the green? We highlight the “active” field when you save the Pricelist, so you know at a glance which one is being used.

Which method should I use?

You should set your profit if:

You want guaranteed margins on every sale. In the event of currency or base cost fluctuations, you may earn more than you set… but never less. The price displayed to your customers may change as a result of this, but the rounding tool is there to help make those numbers pretty.

You should set your price if:

You have printed materials that require your pricing to stay fixed. We’ll switch over to profit-based pricing if the base cost ever goes higher than your set price. We’ll just use the profit amount you had when you first saved the Pricelist.

Hey, SmugMug Pros! We’ve revolutionized the way you do pricing with our new feature: Pricelists.

Traditionally, SmugMug pricing has been done on a gallery-by-gallery basis. It worked OK if you wanted to copy pricing over from one gallery to another, but changing it later (across your hundreds of galleries) was a different story.

But first, our co-founder and president has something to say:

What are Pricelists?

In short: Each Pricelist is like a bucket, into which you can easily drop galleries to price and sell your photos.

Start by choosing products that you want to sell, tell us how much profit you want to make, and then add your galleries (or photos) to that Pricelist. Done.

Isn’t it a thing of beauty?

Why the change?

Pros have told us that doing gallery-by-gallery pricing wasn’t working out so well once they had lots of galleries to manage. Our goal was to make it super-simple and super-fast for all Pros to easily price their stuff and get photos sold.

The new look is clean and modern, and this renovation makes it easier for us to add shiny new features down the road… like new products and foreign currency support. (*hint, hint*)

What does this mean for me as a Pro?

We can think of four big benefits for you right off the bat:

1. Manage all of your pricing from one place.
2. Manage your pricing across hundreds of galleries with a few clicks.
3. Easily maintain different pricing for weddings, sports, or family photos.
4. Decide how much profit you make on each sale.

During the migration you won’t be able to make any changes to your prices, but your current pricing will remain live and your customers will continue to have the ability to purchase your images at your current pricing.

After migration, your pricing will appear unchanged to your customers, but you’ll have more power to edit them, behind the scenes.

Upgrade to Pricelists in 3 Steps:

You can choose to start over and just build new pricing from the ground up. Or you can delay your choice a little longer. On March 1st, 2012, we’ll migrate everyone over to use the new system automatically, keeping your current pricing structure but giving you instant access to Pricelists.

Anything else I should know?

We thought you’d have questions. Here’s some answers.

There’s almost zero risk of accidentally selling something with no gain to you. In the old days (like, uh, yesterday), you had to price something at $0 to remove it from your cart, and unpriced items were sold at-cost. Now you manually add in each item you want to sell.

Digital Downloads now have a minimum cost: $0.49 $0.01 for individual photos and $.99 for gallery downloads, plus a $0.50 fee if your download order subtotal rings up under $10. Want to offer these for free? Enable Originals in your gallery, create a backup file to share, or create a Coupon to nuke the charges at checkout.

You determine your markup, not the final price shown in the cart. UPDATE! You can set your profit OR your price. Set a general percent increase over the whole Pricelist, or you can fine-tune the amount for each product you offer. We also give you the option of rounding up your pricing to make the displayed cost easy on the eyes.

Choose between Bay Photo and EZ Prints the moment you create the Pricelist. If you change your mind on an existing Pricelist, you’ll need to create a new one with the lab of your choice. Need to compare the two labs to make a choice? Check out the full catalog.